Church's Auxiliary for Social Action

Church's Auxiliary for Social Action
Charity
Industry NGO
Founded 1947, India
Headquarters Registered office: New Delhi
Zonal offices: Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai,
Sector offices: Guwahati, Imphal, Aizawl, Dimapur, Shillong, Bhubaneshwar, Ranchi, Lucknow, Indore, Raipur, Udaipur, Nagapattinam, Cuddalore, Tirunelveli, Alapuzha, Bapatla, Port Blair and Shimla
Key people
Busi Suneel Bhanu (Chairperson), Sushant Agarwal (Director)
Number of employees
500
Website

Church's Auxiliary for Social Action (founded in 1947) is an irreligious Indian development organisation based in Chennai and a service wing of the National Council of Churches in India comprising the Orthodox and Protestant Church Societies in India. CASA is a member of ACT Alliance[1]

Mar Aprem Mooken writes,[2]

Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India at the time of partition, asked the Christian community to assist in the work among the refugees, which the community readily responded through the National Council of Churches in India.

Genesis

The partition of India played a virtual havoc with peoples lives which Jawaharlal Nehru,[3] then Prime Minister of India wanted to address and shared it with J. Waskom Pickett and Marshall Russell Reed who involved the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) to lend a hand in mitigating the suffering of the displaced people for which the NCCI formed an ad hoc Relief Committee. Over the years', the Relief Committee took different names,

Funding

As a development non-religious organisation the activities of CASA are funded through the individuals, the Churches in India, the State, the corporates and a few overseas ecumenical bodies.[3]

List of Directorships[7]

(Period, Name of the Director )

  • 1947-1947 - Dr. E. C. Bhatty
  • 1947-1948 - Dr. E. D. Lucas
  • 1949-1951 - Dr. Donald Ebright
  • 1952-1956 - Dr. Donald Rugh
  • 1956-1957 - Mr. Ranjit Chetsingh
  • 1957-1958 - Rev. Edward Benedict
  • 1958-1961 - Mr. J. S. S. Malelu
  • 1962-1966 - Capt. Alexander Jethro
  • 1966-1971 - Mr. Stephen Mathai
  • 1971-1971 - Mr. Idrak Bhatty
  • 1971-1972 - Mr. H. B. Kadambavanam
  • 1972-1974 - Mr. S. Ponraj
  • 1974-1975 - Mr. T. S. Francis
  • 1975-1977 - Mr. P. C. Joseph
  • 1977-2001 - Maj. J. K. Michael
  • 2001-Present - Dr. Sushant Agrawal

Programmatic interventions

CASA's approach to development could be put in the following way,[8] The Cross Cutting Thematic Areas of CASA’s programmatic interventions are : 1. Humanitarian Aid 2. Development Initiatives to address Structural Poverty 3. Gender Mainstreaming 4. Climate Change 5. Local Capacities for Peace and 'Do No Harm'

References

  1. ACT Alliance Members
  2. Mar Aprem Mooken, From Relief to Development: A Profile of CASA, Jaffe Books, 1979, p.17.
  3. 1 2 CASA - About us
  4. The National Christian Council Review, Volume 97, Wesley Press, 1977, p.139.
  5. H. Dwight Swartzendruber, Forty Years of Service Beyond Our Borders, Masthof Press, Morgantown, 2012.
  6. Harold C. Fey (Edited), A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Volume 2: 1948-1968, Wipf and Stock, Eugene, 2004, p.228.
  7. Somen Das, Mission Redefined' (CASA at 60 - striving towards life in fullness, Appendix C, Leadership of CASA.
  8. CASA, Our Approach to Development
Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 14, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.